
/IJ <^^yl) 



Q¥ THE 



BIETH K-^jy DEATH 



NATION'S. 



A THOUaHT FOR THE CRISIS. 



lAcKai^^j Tame 



NEW YORK: 

G. P. PUTXAM, 532 BPvOADWAY. 
1862. 



Aa- I 



BIRTH AID DEATH OF NATIONS. 



IN the primitive ages of the world, long before the dawn 
of history, while Prometheus lay chained to the rock, 
and the men of Shinar, dispersed by the divine anger, 
settled themselves in new habitations, there was sent into 
that far off eastern country, the earliest home of the race, 
a messenger from the celestial powers. "With a virgin's head 
and face, she had the stalwart body of a lion and the 
strong wings of an eagle. She had been taught by those 
l^rimeval intelligences and instructors of the gods, the 
Muses, and knew all the wisdom of the ages, past and to 
come ; and her commission was to stand on the waysides, 
and in the great thoroughfares of the people, and put 
questions — riddles — to the passers by. Questions, doubt- 
less very apt, significant and necessary to be put, but often, 
to that infant race, most obscure, enigmatical, and difficult 
of right answer. And yet there v/as no escape ; answered 
they must be, wisely, justly, and to the point, under 
penalty of a sudden and sure destruction, — for such was 
the inexorable decree of the inscrutable Powers that ruled 



4 lilKTU AND UKATH OF NATIONS. 

that ancient world. To-day even, whoever likes and can 
afford it, may see her colossal image cut out of a black 
basaltic spur of the Libyan mountains, overlooldng the 
Nile, a neighbor and meet companion of the great Pyramid 
of Cheops. 

To the Greeks the Sphinx was the offspring of the Chi- 
mera. In disparagement of her authenticity, the sceptics 
call her a Myth, as if the Myths were not the oldest and 
most indestructible facts in the history of the world. But 
by whatever name she may be called, from that remotest 
period of the ethnic formationsof humanity, the beginnings 
of nations, even mito this day, have her arduous questions 
been propounded, and always with no jot or tittle of the 
old penalty abated — a right true answer or certain over- 
whelming ruin. 

On no habitable summits of the earth, in any age of 
human histoiy, have questions of a higher import or involv- 
ing mightier interests, secular and eternal, been put to the 
sons of men, than those that to-day so urgently press them- 
selves upon the consideration of the people of these United 
States. Nor can their just solution be any longer avoided 
or delayed, under forfeitures more disastrous and deplora- 
ble than any people ever before were called upon to pay. 
For this is the nineteenth century of the Christian era, and 
we live under its Master's unfailing word — " Unto whom 
much is given, much will be required." Very necessary 
is it tlien, tb.at we should lift ourselves intelligently to the 
moral level of these questions, and in the faith that truth 
alone has the right to reign over the world and to govern 
its facts, without attempting to anticipate or forestall the 



BIRTH AND DEATH OF NATIONS. O 

final dispositions of the Infinite Providence, make our 
answer fearlessly, in the light of that Word, and of liis- 
tory. 

And first of all, in the order of events as Avell as of the 
argument, it is demanded of us to answer by what right 
we call ourselves a nation, and claim to hold and rule as 
one INDIVISIBLE DOMAIN, all these broad territories, stretch- 
ing from ocean to ocean ? 

The question is asked upon quite another and higher 
authority than that of any Confedei-ate States' president or 
congress. Nor does the roar of their cannon constitute 
the most urgent reason for its prompt answer. That be- 
came necessary only in consequence of the obdurate dul- 
ness of the national car to " the still small voices." Even 
so has it been from the beginning — "the still small voices" 
once became inaudible, and the Supreme Powers must 
needs commission the loud and ever louder ones, oven 
unto the roar of whole batteries of rifled cannon. Al- 
ready at Sumter, Bull Run, and elsewhere have these 
batteries belched forth such a denial of the nation's right to 
national existence, as leaves no doubt of the internecine 
nature of the hatred that so vents itself, and demonstrates 
the imminency of the crisis that urges us to a thorough 
examination of the grounds upon which the great battle 
must be fought, in order that our batteries may be planted 
upon the immovable foundations laid by the fathers, and 
our cannon charged not alone with the elemental forces of 
carbonized saltpetre, but, consubstantial Avitli these, with 
the far more invincible logic of that Divine Word which 
in the beginning became flesh in this nation, and will, in 



6 niRTH AND DKATII OF NATION'S. 

defiance of all the powers of darkness tliat assail it, have 
free course and be glorified in its history. 

Let us, then, to begin with, clear our minds of that athe- 
istical, impious, secession vagary — that a nation is a sj^ecies 
of heterogeneous, accidental aggregation of men or of 
states, held together by a sort of " balance of interest 
treaty " or contract of copartnership, entered into for the 
l^urpose of establishing and carrying on the highly profit- 
able business of stump oratory " for Buncombe," securing 
" the spoils of victory " in certain annual games of ballot- 
box stufiing, and breeding "colored chattels" for the sham- 
bles of king cotton. This notion of the essential nature 
and purposes of our national existence, has now for several 
years been entertained, and by many distinguished poli- 
ticians and leaders of the people, with no little energy, 
reduced to practice in these United States, — with Avhat 
effect begins to be apparent enough. No more false or 
fatal emanation from the bottomless pit ever lodged itself 
in the human understanding, and the necessity of dislodg- 
ing it with the truth seems just now very urgent indeed, to 
the present writer. 

The TRUTH being that, even in the most rigorous scien- 
tific definition of it, a nation is an organized body, and by 
no means a mere aggregation of individual men or inde- 
^)endent communities; and so, like every other organized' 
body, must from the very nature of things, incorporate its 
own, distinctive organic force or Idea. Indeed, it is only in 
virtue of this distinctive organic idea, that it becomes a na- 
tion at all. To this merely formal statement of the truth, 
history, irradiated by the light of eighteen Christian cen- 



BIRTH AND DEATH OF NATIONS. 7 

turies, adds a far sublimer derivation and broader scope. 
It declares, that in the great ejiochs of the world, the Om- 
nipotent Providence confides to a chosen people the revela- 
tion of a great truth, a great regenerative idea ; and that 
from thenceforth, that idea becomes for that jieople the 
germ of its national life and civilization — its soul, without 
which it could no more be a nation, than the human body 
could be a man without the human soul. For in this more 
excellent sense, a nation is but a larger form of humanity, 
a grander Cosmos or receptacle of the Divine Presence in 
the world. And it is this Presence, this fundamental idea, 
which constitutes the real substance of the national life, and 
determines the legitimate character and course of the 
national development and civilization. 

This presence of a divinely posited fundamental idea, 
as vital force in the ethical evolution and growth of nations, 
is the highest, grandest fact in the history of the race. 
The sublimest theme of the oldest Scriptures is this doc- 
trine of the genesis of all things from the Spirit " moving 
upon the face of the deep." The first product being light, 
thought, idea — and then the idea emerging into articulate 
word, a fact in time. Not only the solid earth, upon 
Avhich to-day beats the heavy tramp of our armies, was so 
founded, but so were embodied and established all the sev- 
eral nations that have dwelt upon its surface, even unto 
that one whose " covenant of life " bears date on the fourth 
day of July, 1776, and contains these ever-memorable 
words, then first in the providential unfolding of the ages 
made audible to the ears of men : 

" All men are created equal, endowed by their 



8 birth and death of nations. 

Creator with the inalienable rights of life, liberty, 

AND the pursuit OF HAPPINESS." 

" America," said the great Earl of Chatham, in a mem- 
orable debate in the Englisli House of Lords in 1*7 70, "was 
settled upon ideas of liberty." By what Promethean strug- 
gle has every simplest truth, every human right, to get 
itself established on the earth ! What a career had that 
English humanity to run from whence America sprung, 
before even the dimmest adumbration of human liberty 
could emerge into articulate exj^ression, and obtain for 
itself some faint acknowledgment as natural human right ; 
some dubious authority as the Common Laio ! And even 
now, it is only where that law prevails that any such liberty 
exists. For wherever the civil or Roman law is supreme, 
such liberty as it recognizes, exists only as a franchise, 
as founded in the idea of a grant from lord or sovereign to 
his subject; and the idea has proved itself stronger than 
all the might of the people, l^o number of French revo- 
lutions, not even a " reign of terror," has been able to pre- 
vail against it. Is it not necessary, then, tO believe in the 
soUdity and strength of ideas ? The very fact is, that the 
whole interminable web of human history is woven, " upon 
the roaring loom of time," of nothing else but ideas. 

Doubtless the words of the wise old statesman were 
most true : " America was indeed settled upon ideas of 
liberty," but not of liberty only. Ideas of a still broader 
scope and grander aim, wrought silently but strenuously in 
that settlement ; ideas originating in the advent of the 
divine Manhood into the world, and the sublime transfigu- 
rations thereby effected in the status and history of the 



BIRTH AND DEATH OF NATIONS. 



race ; ideas of the equal dignity and worth of the common 
humanity, in its own spiritual substance, as the begotten of 
God, the bearer of his image, the continent of his j^res- 
ence in the world, and, by right of its own nativity, en- 
dowed with the faculty of " life, liberty, and the pursuit of 
happiaess." In no merely pagan age, under no merely 
pagan develoj)ment, could this idea have been evolved. 
All the previous ages of Hebrew and heathen longing and 
endeavor were necessary, doubtless, to tlie great gestation 
and the coming of that " fulness of time." But then, as a 
condition precedent, the highest, divinest man must have 
the humblest parentage, the lowest birthplace, most neces- 
sitous life, and most ignominious death. So much must 
become a fact of history, and to this fact must be conjoined 
the idea, not less a truth, that this humblest, most stricken 
man was a Divine Presence — the" very Logos of God — the 
Light of the world. This, and eighteen hundred years 
besides, of human elFort and travail, of human failure and 
divine grace, were required to rehabilitate human nature 
with its original divine right of sonship to God, and to 
evolve the great regenerative idea upon which America 
was founded, and in which lie enwombed the germ and 
vital forces of its whole national life, civilization, and well- 
being. 

What less than this idea of the consubstantial equality 
of all men — of man in his own substance as man, without 
regard to the accidents of birth, fortune, education, or 
complexion — could have supplied a ground broad enough 
upon which to found a nationality, whose membership from 
the beginning was intended to embrace the outcasts and 
1* 



10 BIRTH AND UKATII OF NATIONS. 

expatriated of all the other nations and races of men ; and 
to whom should be given a whole continent for work-field ? 

The advocates of what is called conservatism in Eng- 
land, Avhich means simply a blind perpetuity of " the dead 
past," seem just now to take heart and jubilate amazingly 
over what they call a " failure of the democratic ^xi^eri- 
ment," The men who for eight hundred years have held 
the proceeds of the great robbery committed by the hordes 
of William the Conqueror, and the men who have cunningly 
filched and funded the profits of the labor of the English 
worker for the same time, may naturally enough rejoice 
over even a semblance of failure of a system founded in 
ideas of human equality, and the right of the humblest 
man to enjoy the benefits of his own labor. But let them 
be assured that, whatever may be the issue of the present 
struggle in this country, there is not the least ground for 
their jubilation. In the first place, the "disruption" upon 
which they rely has arisen wholly out of a practical repu- 
diation of the ideas upon which our " democratic institu- 
tions" were founded, and by no means out of any inherent 
defect in these ideas. In the second place, if the consjDira- 
tors of the South should succeed in making the disruption 
permanent, and in founding a State upon a system which 
accomplishes even a worse robbery of human rights than 
that upon which older aristocracies are founded, it will not 
in the least constitute a failure of " democratic institutions," 
but rather purify and reinvigorate them, giving them new 
scope, power, and dignity, in the face of which no such sys- 
tem could long endure. 

The truth is, that the perpetual mutations and revolu- 



BIRTH AND DEATH OFNATIONS. 11 

tions that so convulse and afflict European society have 
their source in the antagonisms arising out of the circum- 
stantial, the accidental in human condition, and the over- 
whelming class interests, upon Avhich that society is founded. 
Only upon that which is in itself durable, only upon the 
permanent element in human nature — the equal dignity and 
worth of manhood in its own sphitual substance — can any 
nationality or social polity be founded, which shall at once 
be permanent in its own nature and admit of a free devel- 
opment in all of its conditions. This is the ground of 
Christianity — the ground upon which God founds his own 
government of the world — the ethical evolutions of his 
own providence, and, as a great product of that provi- 
dence, of our nationality and free democratic institutions. 

And in this lies the answer to the question as to the 
nature of that right, by which we are authorized to call 
ourselves a nation. But no spiritual entity, no Idea^ can be 
maintained in the world without giving it a body — Avithout 
making it a fact. In no other way can the fundamental 
idea of our nationality be maintained, but by organizing it 
into our social institutions, manners, and laws — by making 
it, in all its grand and beneficent meaning, the basis of the 
actual state and condition of the whole nation. In this 
consists the real life and unity of the nation — its life and 
unity in its own essential substance. The ethnic formation, 
the body of the nation, is the product of this fundamental 
idea ; and they only in whom the idea inheres, in whom 
it lives^ and by whom it is faithfully developed, are in fact 
the nation. 

Very important is it, at this conjuncture in our national 



\2 UITTII ANU DEATH OF NATIONS. 

history, that all men should clearly comprehend the nature 
of this life, and the nature of that hy which it may be 
fatally injured and subverted. By no amount of material 
power, by no number of battalions, can it be seriously af- 
fected or endangered, so long as the idea in which it sub- 
sists is retained in full force and virtue to vivify the hearts 
of the People. On the other hand, that which attacks, 
weakens, and tends to obliterate this idea, is to be regarded 
as the implacable enemy to whom no quarter can be given. 
For as surely as the great oak of the forest begins to wither 
and decay the moment it ceases to obey the vital forces 
contained in the germ from whence it sprung — the moment 
it ceases to [/roio in accordance with the law of its own 
organic life — so surely does a i^eoplc begin to fall ihto ruin 
the moment it ceases to develop the fundamental idea of 
its own nationality, to work out its own appropriate civ- 
ilization and history. 

Can there be any doubt, then, as to our supremest, most 
sacred national obligations ? What else from the beginning 
had we to do, but faithfully to execute the great providential 
trust confided to us, to make the broadest meaning of that 
solemn Declaration, fact in our history ? Was not this the 
immutable condition of the covenant made by the fathers 
with God and humanity, in virtue of which Ave became in- 
vested with the divine rifjht of nationality, and for the 
faithful performance of which they solemnly pledged, not 
only their own, but, as its representative head, " the life, the 
foi'tune and sacred honor" of the nation? 

Has that solemn pledge been kept? Have we as a 
People fulfilled the conditions of that covenant of national 



13IKTH AND DEATIJ OF NATIONS. 16 

life ? What, in trutli, lias been hitherto the purport of our 
national endeavors ? Not to si^eak here of the unparalleled 
development of our material interests and our really great 
achievements in whatever appertains thereto ; not to speak 
of the genuine, manly work performed with "axe and 
plough and hammer," or of its appropriate reward, abun- 
dant crops of" Indian corn, and cotton, and dollars " — with a 
FKEE PRESS, PULPIT, aud BALLOT BOX — what havc we really 
done, tip to this year of our Lord, 1861, toward the ac- 
complishment of the great providential undertaking com- 
mitted to our hands ? 

The ear of the ancient Inscrutable Questioner listens for a 
right true answer ; and however deeply the national brow 
may be suffused with the blush of shame, a right true 
answer is sujDremely necessary to the future safety and 
well-being of the nation. And the truth, coined into the 
gentlest admissible terms, declares that to us as a people, 
whatever else we may have done of good or left undone 
of evil, belongs the cUsthiguished infamy of having given 
birth to the idea, and developed into an mstltutidn, a 
scheme of human degradation in w^hicli a human soul is 
held bereft, not only of all civil liberty and rights, but of all 
its natural attributes — is held to be not apei^son, but a bit 
ofpropcrti/ — not to possess even a human life, but only that 
of a beast, and as a beast is kept for breeding other beasts, 
(often with white men for sires,) for the public markets of 
the world ; a scheme which rolls back the civilization of 
two thousand years, blots out the central idea of Christian- 
ity, and reestablishes a worse than pagan barbarism ; and 
all this in the face of the great announcement, made 



14 BIKTII AND DEATH OF NATIONS. 

eighteen centuries ago, of God's all-benelicent intention to 
redeem, emancipate, and glorify the nature of his offspring 
— human nature. For what other meaning is there in that 
divine assumption of this nature, in its humblest condition ? 
■what other significance in the bewildered history of these 
centuries ? 

A cruel system of servitude did indeed exist among 
the ancient nations. But its fundamental idea was the idea 
of autlwrity — authority absolute and monstrous, but stiU 
of authority and not oi property. In ancient Greece, where 
the slave had no political or civil rights, his quality as a 
human being, as a man, was respected. It was only in 
Rome, that ultimate flower of all pagan cupidity and rap- 
ine, where slavery existed on a scale so monstrous as almost 
to defy belief, that something like the American idea pre- 
vailed. But even in the Rome of the emperors, the man- 
hood of the slave was not totally annihilated. The old pagan 
master regarded his servl rather as ministers to his comfort 
or luxury, than as the subjects of traffic or a source of rev- 
enue. " In the household of an opulent senator," says 
Gibbon, " might be found every profession, either liberal or 
mechanical. Youths of a promising genius Avere carefully 
instructed in the arts and sciences." And yet, God in his- 
tory never taught any truth more clearly or more emjohati- 
cally, than that Roman slavery was the great enemy by 
which that grandest fabric of jsagan civilization, the Roman 
nationality and empire, was utterly overthrown and sub- 
verted. 

As the primeval perfidy, the primal thought of evil, 
which culminated in the first revolt of arrogant selfishness 



BIRTH AND DEATH OF NATIONS. 15 

and pride, had birth in the highest circles of created intel- 
ligences, so it would seem that only among a people 
founded upon ideas of liberty and the equal dignity and 
worth of manhood, could a scheme so atrocious as South- 
ern slavery be brought forth. An archangel only, could 
become the father of lies. Only the inner light of a peo- 
ple to whom the divine Manhood had been revealed, could 
become such utter darkness. 

A most strange and portentous result of national en- 
deavor, in view of the point from whence the nation set 
forth upon its career, is this American slavery — this insti- 
tiction of human depravation. ISTor does the gist of the 
great evil so much consist in the outrage committed against 
the civil rights of the slave, as that in his person, not only 
is an irretrievable offence perpetrated against human na- 
ture, against our common humanity, but such a fatal in- 
jury to the vital idea of our nationality and civihzation, as, 
if persisted in, we may not even hope to survive. For if 
the TRUTH set forth in that solemn national Declaration 
shall not succeed in making all men free, then the false shall 
triumph in making all men slaves. This is the inexorable 
divine law, of which all human history is but the illustra- 
tion. The great false pretence, which the nation still so 
insanely persists in — the great lie, it so shamelessly holds in 
its right hand — by a fatal law of accretion shall draw to 
them all other perfidies, until the national heart and con- 
sciousness shall become so darkened and depraved that no 
sense of truth, human or divine, no love or reverence for 
any human rights, liberty, or manhood shall remain, and 
the national life and history shall become a very " devils' 



10 BIRTH AND DEATH OF NATIONS. 

chaos instead of a God's cosmos." In the communities 
"where the maUgn and lying spirit of slavery has taken the 
most complete possession of the imderstandings and hearts 
of men, this transformation seems already to have taken 
place. So utterly has all sense of the most sacred human 
I'ights and obligations been extinguished, all fealty and 
patriotism eaten out, as to make the most atrocious vil- 
lanies appear like innocence, and treason against the grand- 
est fabric of human liberty ever erected on earth, like the 
noblest of civic virtues — nay more, like the most sacred 
and divinely imposed duties. Says the Rev. Dr. Palmer 
of New Orleans, a man of learning and thought, and a 
great authority in these communities, " The great 2^'>'ovi- 
dential trust to the South is to conserve and perpetuate the 
institution of domestic slavery. Let us take our stand on 
the HIGHEST MOEAL GKouND, cind p)t'oclabn to all the world 
that ice hold this trust from God. In defending it., to 
the South is assigned the high 2yosition of defending he- 
fore all nations, the cause of all religion and all truth.'''' 

"What else is this, but the ravings of the madness 
and dementation engendered by slavery? "What must 
be the condition of a people, whose seers and lirojihets 
have become so profoundly unconscious of their own 
utter demoralization? By a like i)rocess have perished 
the most powerful and proudest nations of antiquity. And 
so inevitably must this nation perish, imless it can be 
awakened to its true peril and moved to expurgate and 
cast out forever the insidious perfidy, the fatal lie that 
corrupts and consumes its vitals. For let not these people 
be deemed Avoi'se by nature, than others. It is but the 



BIUTH AND DEATH OF NATIONS. 17 

blind and malignant spirit of slavery that sijeaks with their 
tongue, and with their hands brandishes its weapons. Is 
this a spirit any longer to be paltered with? Ought we 
any longer to entertain its insidious, treacherous sophistries? 
If that were possible, could we aiFord even at the price of 
tlie restitution of the external unity of the nation, to lose 
the light and glory of its internal life — at the price of saving 
our national body, can we afford to barter away our na- 
tional soul ? 

We stand then at this pass. "We know from whence 
and ujDon what conditions we hold our right to national 
existence and Avell-being. We know, beyond a per- 
adventure, the implacable enemy that seeks their de- 
struction. We know even, that by a necessity of its own 
nature, it cannot do otherwise than destroy them utterly, 
unless itself be destroyed. What else, in fact, is that open 
treason to the external unity of the nation, that to-day with 
so much "pomp of circumstance" sets its battle in array, 
but the outward expression of the far more dangerous 
treason that now for many years has been building its in- 
trenchments in the national heart and sapping the very 
foundations of the national civilization and strength ? What 
else, but the necessary outbreak of that subtle and malign 
perfidy that for a generation has burrowed in the national 
understanding, sj)awning its lies and sowing them broadcast 
through the land, until now, like the di-agon's teeth, they 
spring up armed men — traitors. Or, does any man not 
stone-blind, believe that if to-day the Union were to be 
restored, and with it the pernicious cause of its disruption 
placed again under the guarantees of the Constitution, the 



18 BIRTH AND DEATH OF NATIONS. 

nation would not thereby be set back, to begin the great 
war over again, unless slavery had thus secured to itself the 
mastery of the National Government ? This is its supremest 
necessity, and the instinct of this necessity, conjoined with a 
conviction that the mastery of tlie National Government had 
escaped from their hands, compelled the slave masters to 
undertake disunion at all risks, Ou this point we have 
done these men a kind of injustice. Slavery can no more 
exist under a government of practical freedom, than liberty 
can exist under a government mastered by slavery. It is 
but the common exigency of every legally estahlished 
hwnan wrong. To secure itself against the attacks of light 
and truth, against the perpetual encroachments, "coercions" 
of human progress, it must be master of the power that 
makes the laws. Under whatever political system or form 
of government, therefore, slavery shall hereafter be per- 
mitted to exist on this continent, Avhether in a Southern 
confederacy or a restored Union, it will, it must, from a 
necessity of its own self-preservation, be master of the 
Government and national institutions, and through these, 
of the national life, civilization, and history. There is then 
no alternative for this nation ; either its own original, di- 
vinely endowed life must be surrendered up, or it must 
conquer and destroy its unappeasable enemy, slavery. 

Tliat the nation possesses the requisite material poxoer 
to make this conquest, is not generally questioned, at least 
in the loyal States ; to say nothing of the^;ere«?i2ai strength 
inherent in the great idea of our nationality, which still 
abides with them, and day and night cries out for its right 
to conquer in this war. Tlie question about which men 



BIRTH AND DEATH OF NATIONS. 19 

seem to doubt, and our public functionaries hesitate, is, has 
the nation the right to use the means of conquest which it 
possesses ? It is said the national Constitution forbids it ; 
that, by some extraordinary metamorphosis, this great pal- 
ladium of liberty has the power only to cover and protect 
slavery. If this were true, the decisive answer would be 
that the Constitution Avas made for man, and not man for 
the Constitution. But it is a great defomation of that 
justly to be revered instrument. In its own nature, as a 
form of national government, as the supreme law of the 
nation, it recognizes the nation's right of self-preservation, 
and to use all the means necessary to that end. It recog- 
nizes the existence of the present most atrocious war, waged 
by the nation's enemy, slavery, and authorizes the sov- 
ereignty which it creates, to clothe itself with the rights 
and powers, known and acknowledged by all civilized na- 
tions as the laws of war ; and by which all States and com- 
munities, in a state of war, are bound, whether it be a na- 
tional or a civil war. So that the powers of the National 
Government, administered in strictest conformity with the 
Constitution, are just so far enlarged by a state of war, as 
are all the powers conferred by the laws of war. To dis- 
regard these laws, and the powers which they confer in 
time of war, is just as unconstitutional, in the truest 
meaning and intent of that instrument, as it would be to 
exercise them in time of i:)eace. Nor is it by any means a 
matter of mere option with those upon whom the people 
have devolved the duty of carrying into eifect the rights 
and jDowers of their Government, whether or not these 
powers shall be exercised. On the contrary, by their offi- 



20 13IRTII AND DEATH OF NATIONS. 

cial ojvths, by all the most sacred obligations that can bind 
the consciences of men, they are bound to see to it, that, 
in the present exigency, the nation suffers no loss, loses no 
advantage, that might arise out of the exercise of these 
constitutional war j^owers. 

Already has the judgment of the nation and of history 
been pronounced upon the dastardly excuse, " a want of 
constitutional j^ower," for the failure to suppress the rebel- 
lion in its very inception. No revei'sal of that judgment 
is possible, so far as James Buchanan is concerned, what- 
ever may be the issue of the jDresent struggle. In the his- 
tory of his country, in the memory of all the coming gen- 
erations of men, his name while it lasts will stand associated 
with the most worthless of his race — will serve as a by- 
word to illustrate the most utter destitution of all truth, 
valor, and manliness in high station, the most pitiful, per- 
fidious, and cowardly official failure that ever disgraced 
human nature ; unless, indeed, he shall have the good for- 
tune to be forgotten in the presence of some still more in- 
famous official delinquency, that awaits future developments 
in the history of our public functionaries. For, leaving out 
of the question the maxims of the highest order of states- 
manship, the briefest consideration of the laws of war and 
the powers thereby conferred ui3on the National Govern- 
ment will serve to demonstrate, that if the servants of the 
people, who have been intrusted with that sacred duty, 
fail to destroy the cause of the war ^nd thereby save the 
life of the nation, a repetition of his excuse — " want of 
constitutional power" — will not avail to save them from 
still profound er depths of public execration and infamy. 



liJKTH AND DEATH OF NATiUJSS. 21 

It is by no means my purpose here to enter into any 
general exposition of the laws of war, but only to indicate 
a few general principles, and the nature of the powers con- 
ferred by these laws upon every form of government in a 
state of actual Avar. 

According to the highest authorities on the laws of na- 
tions, these rights and powers are derived from one single 
principle — from the object of a just war, which is to prevent 
or 2^wiish injury ; that is to say, to obtain Justice hy force. 
" In order, therefore, that a belligerent power may be en- 
titled to the benefits of these rights and powers, the war 
that it wages must be just^ and prosecuted for a just and 
legitimate end. Thence, the end being lawful, he who has 
the right to pursue the end, has the right to employ all the 
means necessary for its attainment, provided only that 
these means are not in themselves contrary to the laws 
of nature." 

" That is to say, since the object of a just war is to sup- 
press injustice and compel justice, we have a right to put 
in practice against our enemy every measure that wiU tend 
to weaken or disable him from maintaining his injustice. 
To this end, we arc at liberty to choose any and all such 
methods as we may deem most efficacious. We have thence 
a right to deprive our enemy of the possession of every 
thing which may augment his strength, and enable him to 
make and carry on the war. And if that of which we have 
a right to depi-ive our enemy can help us, we have a right 
to convert it to our own use, or to destroy it, whenever 
that is necessary to the main object, which is to disable our 
enemy and destroy the cause of the war. 



22 lUUTII AND DEATH OF NATIONS. 

" And thence, ultim;itely, all otliei- methods proving in- 
sufficient to conquer his resistance, we have a right to j^ut 
our enemy to death. And this iipou tlie simple ground, 
th-.it if we were obliged to submit to his wrong, rather than 
hurt him, good men would inevitably become the prey oi' 
the wicked." 

" Under the came of enemy is comprehended not only 
the first author of the war, but likewise all those who join, 
abet, or aid in the support of his cause. So also, as between 
belligerent powers actually at Avar, all rights, claims, and 
liabilities affect the whole body of the community, together 
with every one of its members." 

At this moment, slavery having organized its powers 
into a regular form of government, with all the functions 
of sovereignty, and embodied and sent into the field a mili- 
tary force, if not equal to that of a first-class European 
power, formidable enough to hold in check the great army 
of the nation, it is difficult to comprehend what real advan- 
tage can possibly arise to the national cause in ignoring the 
fact, and conducting the great struggle on the theory, 
which seems to prevail in the Washington Cabinet, that the 
rebellion is but a temporary insurrection and not a civil 
war. To the rebels themselves and their concealed allies 
in the loyal States there inure great benefits from this the- 
ory. For while slavery is left free to hurl its deadly missiles 
at the nation's heart, the heai't of the treason itself is cov- 
ered and protected by the a?gis of the Constitution. On 
the other hand if, in spite of all constitutional or legal quib- 
bles, this is a real war — a civil war, then the rights and 
powers arising under the laws of war cleai-ly belong to the 



UIRTII AND UEATll OF NATIONS. 23 

National Government, arc indeed as truly within the pur- 
port of the Constitution, as if conferred by express provision, 
and in the words of our wisest statesman, John Quincy 
Adams, " abundantly sufficient to hurl the institution into 
the gulf.'''' 

While slavery remained upon its own ground, obedient 
to the Constitution, a due regard for the requirements of 
that instrument might justly be held to bind the National 
Government from dealing Avith it, as in its own nature it 
deserved. But the moment it threw off its obligations to 
the Constitution, and set at defiance the authority of the 
nation, the question of its existence became wholly dis- 
charged of all constitutional prohibitions and restraints ; 
and from thenceforth the National Government was impera- 
tively bound to take possession of it as a national affair ; to 
deal with it, as with any other question vitally affecting 
the national well-being, on its own merits, and dispose of 
it with an enliglitened, fearless, and far-reaching states- 
manship. 

But what a bottomless slough of absurdities, are even 
honest men compelled to swelter in, when once they have 
put their hand in that of slavery, and allowed themselves 
to be led by it ! It is said the rebels have indeed com- 
mitted a great outrage upon the Constitiition, but that that 
is no reason why the loyal people of the Union, and their 
Government, should do the same thing by abolishing slavery^ 
the Constitution coyitaining no exiyress provision giving 
them that poioer. As if the Constitution did contain an 
express provision authorizing the blockade of Southern 
poi'ts, or filling them up with stone-filled hulks — the bui'n- 



^4 HIKTU ANU UKATll OF NATIONS. 

ing of the rebel's dwellings, imjjrisoning and slaying his 
white children, and sweeping his whole land with the besom 
of destruction. Only one act, it seems, imposed by the ter- 
rible necessities of Avar, is unconstitutional, and that is, a 
destruction of its cause, Slavery! No Avonder that the great 
heart of tlie Avorld swells with a suppressed shout of de- 
rision at such acumen and statesmanship. War and its 
laws alone, justify and make constitutional any of these 
acts. And much more do they justify and command the 
utter extinction of its acknowledged cause. 

War has been justly termed the " scourge of God." 
And regarding it from the grounds of the broadest Clnis- 
tian statesmanship, it may, indeed, be pronounced an evil 
in itself, in its own nature, so enormous, as never to be jus- 
tifiable except on the ground that the continued existence 
of its cause is a still greater evil. I believe the universal 
conscience of Christendom, if appealed to, would confirm 
this position. To destroy the existence of the cause, is 
then the only legitimate aim and end in the prosecution of 
any Avar. It follows, that a war carried on for any other 
purpose, or Avith any other intent than that of destroying 
or removing its cause, is not only unjustifiable, but a great 
mistake, or a great crime. Only on the ground that 
slavery, the admitted cause of the present Avar, is such an 
evil, and that the Avar is aimed at its extinction, can it be 
justified before God and mankind. 

The existence of an apparent doubt on this point in the 
minds of the men, upon whom rests the momentous re- 
sponsibility of conducting the Avar to its highest, grandest 
issues ; and their paltering hesitancy to carry it on, upon its 



lilUTU ANU DEATH Ok' NATIONS. 2.") 

own basis, as war, and for the achievement of a great and 
just end, is the source of disheartening anxieties and 
doubts, that wound and stagger the popular confidence of 
the loyal States. ISTor is this by any means its only mis- 
chief It gives occasion for an undeserved defamation of 
Republican Institutions, and contempt of our national 
character and aims abroad, that threaten us with the loss 
of the respect of other nations, if not with their active 
hatred and hostility. 

Nor, on another ground than any hitherto set forth, can 
this paramount question be any longer left to be trifled 
with, by epauletted ofiicials, high or low, without peril to 
the sujjremacy of the civil power of the nation, and shame 
to the representatives of the people. The powers conferred 
by the laws of war, belong, primarily, to the supreme au- 
thority of the State, and by no rueans, w^ithout its authori- 
zation, to any one of its administrative or executive func- 
tionaries. The Constitution, itself, takes on these powers, 
and Congress is its proper organ for their distribution — for 
giving them practical authority. Besides the fact, that the 
legislative power is alone adequate to the determination of 
the great question, is alone adequate to foresee and pro- 
vide for the future of the slave as well as of the nation, 
in the presence of the great military force called forth by 
the exigencies of the hour, to watch with a most jealous 
eye every attempt of its chiefs to overstep their function, 
as the arm and servant of the civil powei-, is a matter of 
the most urgent necessity, and a sacred cluty of the 
people's representatives. Most calamitous and deplorable 
indeed would it be, if the war to restore the external 
2 



26 UIKTU A.MJ DtATll OV iNATlOMS. 

unity of the nation should end, not only in reinstating its 
cause, as a sujH-enie power in the State, but in giving the 
jjeople a miUtary autocrasy for their free republican institu- 
tions. In a war carried on for the maintenance of au- 
thority only — for emjnre, merely, this is an evil consequence, 
greatly to be feared. On the other hand, let your battle 
be for a great Idea — let your army be inspired by a great 
sentiment of human justice and liberty, and the danger is cut 
off at its very source. 

But why should the j^eople of the United States, or 
their Government, seek to shuffle off the " inevitable logic 
of events," or squander the providences of God ? The con- 
sjiirators against the life of the nation, plant themselves 
openly, squarely, on the ground of Slavery. The war they 
wage is trammelled by no mental or moral reservations, no 
ambiguity of purpose. To make slavery triumph on this 
continent, and to found iipon it a social order and a State, 
is their loudly vaunted aim, in its prosecution. The malign 
spirit has taken complete possession of their souls ; they 
believe in it, ai'e terribly in earnest about it, ready to die 
for it ! On the other side, on the part of the nation and 
its Government, what great purpose is set forth to justify, 
inspire, and sustain them, in the prosecution of so gigantic 
a struggle '? Is it to restore the rebellious States to the 
Union, and slavery to the safeguards of the Constitution ! 
To reestablish the fatal, malignant evil, not only in all its 
original power, but from the very nature of things, to give 
it renewed strength and ^'igor ! ! For they fall into a most 
pernicious error who imagine, that in some accidental or 
fortuitous way, slavery is to receive its death wound in this 



BlltTlI AXn«DEATn OF NATIONS. 27 

war, even although it may end in its reestahlishment. Let 
no such monstrous delusion be entertained. The ethical 
Providence of the world never returns npon its own foot- 
stejDS. God wastes not a single one of his dispensations, 
repeats not one of man's neglected opportunities. Slavery 
must die, and die now, by the enlightened will of the na- 
tion, or the nation itself must die — must have its own 
heart eaten out by its poisonous, deadly virus. 

But without reference to this inevitable and final con- 
summation, what a solecism in human affairs does this war 
present, when viewed from its own ground, as war, in the 
light of its own logic ! In the history of the world, was it 
ever before proposed to " conquer a peace " by carefully 
maintaining the cause of the war ? "Was it ever before pro- 
posed " to xceciken and disable " a powerful enemy, by be- 
coming the keeper, and enforcing the labor of four millions 
of his subjects, for his sole benefit and support ? To '•'■ over- 
come his res/sifance " by compelling a supply of the very 
means, without which he Avould become utterly helpless ? 
Suppose, for an instant, that these four millions of unwilling 
\oorJcers, from whose labor the enemy draws his daily sus- 
tenance, were iu a night to have the color of their skin 
changed to the Caucasian hue, and these white men Avere 
to send a message to the Commander-in-chief of our armies, 
that they were loyal men, lovers of liberty and the Union, 
and only awaited his permission to rise in their might and 
with one fell swoop destroy the cause of the war, and the 
malignant power of the enemy. And suppose that this 
Commander-in-chief should refuse the proffered assistance, 
and insist that his constitutional duty was, to employ his 



28 BIRTH AND DEATH «F NATIONS. 

great army in standing guard over these willing allies of 
the nation, and in compelling them to serve, and supjiort 
its implacable enemy. What judgment would a skilful 
strategist, an able general pass on such a plan for carrying 
on a gi*eat Avar ? What -would be the sentence of the 
nation and of mankind on such patriotism and statesman- 
ship ? And yet, is not this a sober statement of the facts, 
as they present themselves at this moment, with this 
difference only — that the men, who, the other day, with 
cries of joy, ran to embrace our army on the shores of Port 
Royal while its enemy fled, had not all cuticles of the 
supjDosed color ? 

By what unparalleled infatuation is it, that even yet, 
after all the overwhelming proofs of the execrable charac- 
ter of slaveiy, the understandings and hearts of our public 
men are enthralled and awed in its presence — bound ab- 
jectly, as by a sf)ell of Circe, to cringe and bow to its dia- 
bolical intimations. Under the pressure of the great exi- 
gency created by it, our rulers have not hesitated to set 
aside the most sacred rights guaranteed by the Constitu- 
tion. In the name of national safety they have not hesi- 
tated to suspend the great writ of freedom, the habeas 
corpus, for two hundred years held sacred by all men 
speaking the English tongue, and to jiut manacles on the 
hands of American citizens. But to refuse any longer 
to stand guard over the rebel's slave, or in the name of 
liberty, the rights of human nature and of national existence, 
to permit his shackles to be knocked off, is a thing only to 
be thought of with fear and trembling — to be excused by 
all sorts of phrases, and to be waited for, until it gets itself 



BIRTH AND DEATH OF NATIONS. 29 

transacted in some way, not to excite the latent treason of 
the half-suppressed rebels of the Border States, who, in the 
name of the old master, slavery, and with the old insolence, 
are still permitted to dictate the policy of the National 
Government, and give the Avord of command to the na- 
tional armies. While the earnest conA'ictions of the loyal 
people of the Free States, who furnish these armies, are 
flouted as fanatical and not to be regarded, on the ground, 
apparently, that their j^atriotism and love of country are 
unconditional. 

Is it not time, O men of America, rightful heirs of the 
great inheritance, that Ave should rouse ourselves to a sense 
of the true nature of the enemy we have to overcome, and 
of the deadly perils that environ us? Look, I beseech you, 
at the battle-field, upon which Ave are called to pour out 
the blood of our sons — for who of us has not there a dear 
son ? — Avhat a spectacle does it present ! On the one hand 
stands the great army of slavery, openly, boldly, proudly, 
in the name of Slaveet, Avarring for its triumph. On 
the other hand stands the army of freedom, coA-ertly, ab- 
jectly, in the name of Union, waging " a vague and aim- 
less fight," but still for Slaa'ery ! ! 

" One guards tlirougli love its ghastly throne, 
And one through fear to reverence grown.'' 

How, think you, must such a battle end ? Shall not 
slavery, that " dares and dares and dares," not rather tri- 
umph, than liberty that coAvers and hides herself? Or, 
rather, shall not liberty disown the cowardly, craA'eu souls, 
that dare not fight openly in her name, and yield them up 



30 lilRTH AND DEATH OF NATIONS. 

to become, in very fact, the " mudsills " of that hideous 
throne they so reverence ? 

We may not flatter ourselves : on this plan of the bat- 
tle we need not hope to conquer. The inestimable sacri- 
fices we offer will be but vain oblations. To the Eternal 
Justice there is no sweet savor in them. O friends, we 
must not allow our children to be so driven " like dumb 
cattle " to the shambles. Let us demand an open fight on 
the ground of the great declaration : " All mex are cre- 
ated EQU^VL — ENDOWED BY THEIK CrEATOR WITH THE IN- 
ALIENABLE RIGHTS OF LIFE, LIBERTY, AND THE PURSUIT OF 

HAPPINESS." Only in the strength of the great idea which 
it contains, have we the right even to ask to conquer. 
Only in its name dare we send forth our brave sons to die. 
Only with the consolation that they fell in the cause of lib- 
erty and the rights of humanity, shall we be able to as- 
Buage the griefs that must wring and break our hearts 
at their loss. 

And you, elect of the people, who but now so eagerly 
persuaded them that yon were the qualified of God, and 
fit to keep watch and ward at the doors of that capitol, 
the chosen temple of liberty and the rights of humanity on 
this continent — is it not time that you should lift your- 
selves to the level of the great issue? In the ethical 
evolutions of our national history, a second great era pre- 
sents itself— another " time to try men's souls " stands 
face to fixce with the present hour. The question is not 
now, as a high official personage seems to think, a merely 
technical, attorney one, of construing the letter of the Con- 
stitution, but of refoundiug the nation, and rehabilitating 



BIRTH AND DEATH OF NATIONS. 31 

the national institutions and Government. Slavery by its 
own act has outlawed itself. The determination of its fu- 
ture status settles the whole matter in issue. To restore 
it now to the Union — to receive it again under the guar- 
antees of the Constitution, would be nothing less than to 
refound the nation upon it — to make it the basis of our 
national institutions and the corner-stone of our future civ- 
ilization and history. This calamitous consequence is of 
the very nature of things, and can by no means be evaded 
when once the ignominious restitution shall have been ac- 
complished. 

Besides, Avho, except those " that have eyes and see 
not," can fail to understand the providential intimation. 
These colored men of the South are the men whose blood 
should pay the price of their own redemption. If, in the 
present supreme hour, " there can be no salvation without 
the shedding of blood," they also should have the privilege 
of making the great sacrifice. It is the needed discipline 
and necessary preparation for the possession of freedom, 
that they who seek it, should be willing to die for it. It is 
for you to give them the opportunity — to organize and 
guide them into the Avays of civilized warfare, instead of 
leaving them to grow into an irrepressible mass of bar. 
barism, by and by to burst into a wild and all-devouring 
conflagration. For the sake of our common humanity, it 
is your most sacred duty to take possession of their des' 
tiny, bound up as it is with that of the nation, and, by 
your wisdom and foresight, guide them on their road to 
freedom, and ours to national regeneration and glory. 

Hitherto, we have been able to answer to the re- 



32 BIKTH AND DKATH OF NATIONS. 

preaches of our fellow-men, on account of slavery, that its 
existence ante-dated the existence of the nation, and that it 
was but an extraneous incident in its history, for which the 
founders Avere not responsible. But if now it shall be vol- 
untarily taken back into the bosom of the nation, we shall 
deserve, as we shall most surely receive, the open scorn of 
all mankind. 

But why should we not, in this imminent crisis of our 
national existence, lay to heart the great lesson of the ages 
— that the eternal Providence, that shapes all human will 
and effort into history, even from a liecessity of its own na- 
ture, cannot do otherwise than pursue, with an unappeas- 
able divine hostility, all false pretences and lies — cannot do 
otherwise than blast, with a celestial, eternal hatred, the 
grandest human structures attempted on such foundations 
— sending false nations as easily as false men to judgment 
and eternal doom. 

Many centuries ago, in another far-off land, a favored 
people stood, like us, in the very pitch of a great national 
crisis. The ■ all-beneficent Providence had presented to 
them, likewise, the opportunity of refounding their nation- 
ality upon a basis of eternal truth — that "truth whereby 
all men are made free." The final question was put to 
them with the same terrible emphasis that to-day it is put 
to us : " Whom will te have, Barabbas or Jesus called 
the Christ." "Not He," they cried, "but Barabbas. 
Away with him to the cross ; Barabbas is our man — give 
us Barabbas." And they got Barabbas, and with him such 
guidance as a thief and a liar had to give. We know the 
result. A nation for whom the Delca Logoi had been writ- 



BIRTH AND DEATH OF NATIONS. 33 

ten by God's own finger — who had stood at the nether 
part of the mount and seen with their own eyes " that God 
answered with a voice ; " — a people who had Abraham to 
their father, and a long line of divinely-inspired men for 
teachers and guides ; after eighteen hundred years of per- 
petual dispersion and dilapidation, from the hour of that 
fatal choice, are now, it is said, " prophetically crying ' old 
clo', old clo',' in all the cities of the world." 

And to-day, even in this very hour, in all the thorough- 
fares of the people, upon the very threshold of that capitol 
■where you, their elect, deliberate to become more re- 
nowned than any Roman Senate, or to sink into ignomin- 
ious contempt and forgetfulness, stands the old Inexorable 
Questioner, and demands a right true answer to the final^ 
fateful question, " "Whom will ye serve, slavery or feee- 
DOM ? " 



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